Ajit Jain

Who is Ajit Jain?

Ajit Jain is an Indian born employee of Berkshire Hathaway who currently heads several reinsurance businesses. He was raised in India's coastal state of Orissa. He graduated in 1972 from the IIT Kharagpur with a bachelor's degree in engineering.

Jain worked for IBM in India from 1973 to 1976, then moved to the United States, where he earned an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1978. He joined McKinsey & Co., but returned to India in the early 1980s. After a monthlong courtship, he married Tinku Jain, a girl chosen by his parents. Then he went back to the United States to work for McKinsey. According to Robert P. Miles' book The Warren Buffett CEO: Secrets from the Berkshire Hathaway Managers, Jain said he would not have returned to America, but his wife wanted to move there. In 1985 he left McKinsey to work on insurance operations for Buffett. At the time, he said he knew little about the insurance business. Today, Jain is the President of Berkshire Hathway Insurance group. He is leading Berkshire's Indian insurance market venture.